Hard drive problems--is it dying or do I just need to erase/reinstall?

Have been having freeze-up problems in the last few weeks, so I've been diligent about dumping caches, keeping my permissions verified and repaired and the hard drive itself optimized. I use the Disk Utility and DiskWarrior for this.
Hardware diagnostics show no problem, but this uses feedback from the built-in 'smart' monitoring so, who knows?
Evenso, I kept getting "fun with beach balls" and often lately the hard drive goes 'missing'. When shut the machine down out of frustration and leave it alone for a while, it comes back up nicely. But not for long.
Today, after it came back up again, I decided to heck with it, erase and reinstall. But--you guessed it--the installer doesn't display my hard drive.
What do you knowing folks think? Suggestions most welcome. This has been a great machine, but for only two years.

hi kes4,
Your first reply sounds exactly like a problem I had with my iBook, and it was the hard drive. I too tried doing a reinstall, and my hard drive would not show up. Once it was replaced everything runs good as new.
The issue about it heating up sounds like it might be another concern like the battery. I think your profile said you have a 15in Powerbook? If so, they are doing a safety recall on specific models, just follow the link here,
https://depot.info.apple.com/batteryexchange/index.html?lang=en
There is a chance if it is the battery problem listed Apple might replace your hard drive if they can conclude the battery problem (if thats what it is) caused it. Its worth a shot anyways.
I hope this works out for you.

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To be honest your post is rambling and difficult to read due to the lack of proper punctuation I only read it part way however...
The first thing to do is a proper backup. Your system has Time Machine built into it, here is the Time Machine Tutorial. Look that over, get yourself an external HD to use as a TM drive and backup properly! This will backup all of OS X however it will NOT backup MS Windows!
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Roger

MBP Hard Drive Problem (Again)

My MBP is going back to the Geniuses for a HD problem for the 3rd time tomorrow, since I bought it in July. I am confused about exactly what is happening, and I would like any advice anyone might have about salvaging any of my data.
(The first two times, I brought it in because the HD died. The first time, they told me they had replaced the HD, though they hadn't. They ran diagnostics, decided it did not need to be replaced after erasing my data, and then gave it back to me. I brought it back the next day [t died that night as I was reinstalling] and they replaced the HD in about a day.)
Everything got really slow this weekend and I had "index" and "database" problems in my mail.app (twice), and my iTunes (twice). Now, the replacement HD has disappeared when I tried to reinstall the system software/repair the disk in disk utility.
This is the chronology:
I have had this hard drive for 3 weeks, installed at the local apple store to replace my factory-installed dead hard drive.
On Friday, my mail app stopped working. After diagnosing the error message (thanks to this forum), I learned that the index file was corrupted, so I reinstalled the index.
On Saturday, my iTunes said it couldn't read my iPod, so I restored my iPod, erasing all of my data (music, calendars, contacts, important documents). I continued to get the same error message.
Today, I restored it again, but I still couldn't get iTunes to write more than 2 gb of information (of the 20 gb of data). At that point, I decided I would have to send my iPod in for repairs and stopped trying.
8 hours later, I got an error message that said the iTunes index was corrupted. I started to put the music back in to iTunes, but the MBP kept kept freezing.
I restarted the machine and received the blinking questionmark. I put in my system installation disks to run disk utility and, if need be, reinstall my system software.
This is where it gets interesting:
Disk Utility can see the topline Disk Description and the SMART status is verified. But the name of the disk itself is wrong and the mount point says it is unmounted. The capacity is correct, but under everything from owners enabled to number of files and space available, there is just a dash.
Unlike my previous hard drive problem, there is no clunking, and the hard drive appears to be working. Disk Utility found the following: Invalid B-tree node size. The volume needs to be repaired. Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit. 1 HFS volume checked: volume needs repair. And that's it.
My questions are:
1. What is happening to my hard drive?
2. Is it dead or is there any way to fix it?
3. Is there any way to salvage my data? (Because of my iPod failure, I lost my calendars, contacts, important data from my last big back up 3 weeks ago, not to mention my carefully curated music collection. I have my documents backed up to gmail, but not my notes, which were on my iPod.)
4. Does it sound like an internal hardware problem or is it really just two bum hard drives (from two different manufacturers) in a row?
MacBook Pro 2.16 ghz Intel Core Duo Mac OS X (10.4.8)

In case anyone receives a series of index problems which escalate into apparent hard drive failure and blinking question mark of doom . . .
the Geniuses fixed the computer by doing a complete wipe of my hard drive.
They said that the directory error may have existed from before my last hard drive was installed, but I am not certain how such a thing could exist.
Because it was a directory error, I lost all of my data on the hard drive, but I was able to take the machine home with me within an hour. Since the erase and reinstallation, my computer is running much, much faster, and seemingly cooler, but that may just be my relief at having a working machine back.

Been having Hard Drive Problems

I've been experiencing hard drive problems recently and this started 2 weeks ago. I'm not an expert in the hardware department (bare with me) but I own a 2.26ghz 2009 MBP and the hard drive has been fine up until recently. Not gonna lie, it's performance has decreased significantly over the years and Mountain Lion slowed it even futher.
Anyway I noticed it lagged after waking it from sleep; to the point where it wouldn't respond for longer than 10mins. I had to force shutdown several times, and was afraid of putting it to sleep in fear of encoutering the same problem over and over again.There was one day, where this happened , and it just died on me. Upon bootup, a logo appeared (circle with a cross through it, something to do with startup files?) so I force shutdown again, but everytime afterwards, I'd just get the grey screen of death.
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I've come to the conclusion that it has to be the SATA cable right now, but does anyone have any suggestions? If it is the cable, is there a specific one I should be looking out for? I'm still in HS so money is a bit of a problem. I just need this fixed so I can do my design work

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Ciao.

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By 'cleaned' are you therefor meaning that the drive has been erased and the system re-installed?
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Also this thread may help:
Hard Drive replacement causes new/unknown user password?

I have lost my info for my ipod due to hard drive problem. Can I upload the info on my ipod to my computer. I don't want to lose what is on my ipod.

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- Transfer iTunes purchases by:
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Restoring iTunes files after hard drive problems

HI.
I recently had hard drive problems and since the recovery of the data I have lost all my files from iTunes. The sogs I have put on to the Mac via CD's are all still there but all the iTunes downloads have disapeared. This is probably because I didn't back up!
I also have numerous duplications, which I eventually removed from itunes but I know the majority of which will return if I drag my music folder across.
This will be a hige taks again to remove the duplications.
I want to use this unfortunate incident to my advantage though and now have a clear out of my unwanted files and keep my iTunes nicely organised.
I also lost my playlists, which is a major pain.
By looking at the support threads it seems that I can use my ipod to put my library back as it should be. Will this also replace my downloaded songs? My other issue is that some of my iTunes downloads, downloaded with some problems, which are obviously on my ipod. How do I go about getting the songs repaired?
Thanks for any help.

[Zevoneer's detailed instructions on getting music off an iPod|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9053179#9053179]
[Wired's How To: Get Your Music Off of Your iPod|http://howto.wired.com/wiki/GetYour_Music_Off_of_YouriPod]
[http://www.metaphoriclabs.com/articles/5-ways-to-copy-music-off-your-ipod-windo ws-mac-os-x>
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As for the corrupt files you would need to provide more information on the issues.

MacBook Hard Drive Problems?

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domtrump wrote:
In addition to OSX (Leopard) I have two (2) "MacBook Mac OSX Install" discs. Does anyone know which one is bootable and contains the AHT utility?
You have to determine what version of Leopard shipped with your Mac. It might say on the disk. If not, put in the leopard disk and see which version it is. As stated in the link I gave you.........
For Intel-based Apple computers shipping with Mac OS X v10.5.4 or earlier, Apple Hardware Test is located on the Mac OS X Install Disc 1 and should be included with your computer.
For Intel-based Apple computers shipping with Mac OS X v10.5.5 or later, Apple Hardware Test is located on the Applications Install Disc 2 and should be included with your computer.
Here's another AHT faq.
DALE

Hard drive problems--is it dying or do I just need to erase/reinstall?

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